Initial
Visit to the Residence of the
Minister of Public Security Nazım Paşa
Minister of Public Security Nazım Paşa
In any event, it was quite a coincidence
that my conversation with this
ambassador occurred on Sunday, the 23rd of
September, and on the
evening of Tuesday, the 25th of September, I was
arrested. During the
train ride from Aya
Stefanos to Sirkeci station I thought about what the
ambassador had said about
the lack of legal underpinnings for jailings
such as mine. They raided my office and my home, went
through my
belongings and took whatever they wanted and then, at midnight,
they’re throwing me in prison like a murderer, and even leaving a guard
at my
home to restrict the freedom of my family.
Perhaps
the policemen didn’t even know the reason why they rousted
me but in any case
they said nothing about it. But I was
intent on
learning what had prompted my arrest and search. Evidently, on
Tuesday morning some spy
presented a “journal” about me, but the
matter could have been sorted out the
next day legally in court. As
I’m
heading home after work as I normally do, and not in any way
concealing or
hiding my movements, if they thought I might try to
escape they could have
surveilled my home that night to keep track
of me until morning. Now, though, I understood! Probably someone
observed my conversation
with the ambassador at the “Summer Palas”
and wrote about it. They no doubt listened to me on the
telephone,
too, and came up with a basis to arrest me.
Umumiye building, as our cart turned at the Nallı
Mescid and into the
road that ended at the Iranian Embassy. Meanwhile, I was hearing the
oddest sounds
and saw a janitor, a Karahisar Turk, in front of the
government building
singing a Turkish folk tune. If it were
up to me,
I would have scolded him for being so irreverent while
on government
duty. But Hüseyin Hüsnü
Efendi, evidently recalling his youth in
Kandıra, was delighted to hear
it.
Five minutes later, and after turning at a
few more streets, we arrived
in front of the Minister’s residence. The head policeman told the driver
to wait,
as he got out of the cart and entered the residence, with us
following behind
him. The mansion was not at all the
ominous place
one might expect for the Minister of Public Security. Rather, as I
learned the next day, it had
been built by its owner Count Nedib, a
German, who seems to have had an
esthetic touch.
We ascended the stairs and were met by a
graying servant holding a
candle.
Further up the stairs there was a eunuch trying to light a tall
lamp,
which, once lit, allowed us to see the large room we were in.
I had to think, what could be so important
and dangerous, that they
would come 15 kilometers out of town to search my home and then
wake the
Minister, who had been asleep for three hours, in the
middle of the night to
report their findings? In any case, after a
few minutes they received
the head policman, while I remained in
the large room with Hüseyin Daim, who
was an engaging young
fellow, quite the opposite of the other Hüseyin.
Of course, I do not know what the Minister
and the head policeman
discussed, but I was able to hear the head policeman try
to convince
the Minister that their seizure of me and the prevention of the
destruction or the hiding of my
documents had been a great feat on
their part, not to mention the successful
transfer of the said
documents to the care of the Ministry.
This discussion lasted about half an hour,
after which the decision
was made that I would spend the night at the Central
Prison.
One
Horrific Night at Istanbul Central Prison
Because as the head policeman left the
Minister, he indicated that we
would be going there together. Having been a guest there 20 years
before ((en route to exile on Rhodes)), I
was sanguine about returning
there again.
I knew when the driver was told to wait that this would
happen. In any case, I expected that after leaving my
home and being
deprived of my freedom, if only temporarily, residing in the web
of
cells in the prison would not be much different than staying in a gilded
room of the Sultan’s palace.
Public Works
Ministry to go to the Ministry of Public Security, instead
we turned at the
street of the tomb of Sultan Mahmud. It
may have
been that for those brought to the Minister’s residence at night, the
drivers knew that afterwards the destination would the prison, so we
headed in
the direction of Sultan Ahmed Mosque.
Yet, we were
supposed to first go to the Ministry and check in with the
Central Police
Chief there, before going to the prison. Perhaps the driver’s choice
of this way to go was part of Satan’s
plan to make me relive hateful
memories because, sitting on the right
side of the open cart, as soon as
we passed the corner with the covered bakery,
the frightful sight of
Mahmud Nedim’s
domed grave confronted me. This was
surely the
work of the Devil!
As it turned out, the driver was
wrong. Because when we came to the
corner where the Firuz Ağa Mosque is situated, the head policeman told
the
driver to turn toward the Ministry, where, when we arrived, the
Central Police
Chief was waiting for us on the steps and from there we
went to the Central
Prison.
At the prison, a guard brought us
inside. Since the guesthouse portion
had burned during the time of the late Kemal Bey, I didn’t recognize the
new
style, after the rebuilding. Where
there had been a place for the
army band and, subsequently, for the
tent-makers, the portion facing the
square was now officers’ quarters. The prison warden heard of our
arrival and
quickly came to greet us. We knew each other because we
had grown up in the
same neighborhood. A room had been
prepared for
me and included a coffeehouse chair and a bed, along with a lamp
in the
window.
Since I hadn’t had anything since earlier
in the day, I asked for a cup of
coffee.
I opened the bag that my son Ziya had prepared for me with my
nightclothes and began to change my clothes.
Meanwhile, the warden
was politely trying to learn the reason for my
incarceration but I had
nothing to tell him.
The coffee came and, wishing me a good night’s
sleep , the warden
left. As soon as I drank my coffee I
stretched out on
the bed but it was much too short for me.
It was now two-thirty in the morning. The Fall season had just begun
four days
before, so the dawn would break in just three hours time. I
was quite exhausted from having been on my
feet for more than nine
hours, since five the previous evening, so as soon as I
hit the bed I fell
asleep. At some
point, though, I awoke to the pain of my skin burning.
I looked at the clock at the head of the bed
and saw that it was only
three o’clock so I had been asleep for just 25
minutes. A black cloud
of fleas were
scathing my skin so I got up and completely undressed.
I knew the bed was clean
because it had been brought from the warden’s
home. I had hung the blanket off the foot of the
bed. So if the room had
just been
cleaned where were these fleas coming from?
Evidently from
the wooden floorboards.
I spread the blanket on top of the sheet in order
to give myself a bit
of protection from the fleas’ assault.
I took a bottle of cologne from my bag and
spread it on my swollen skin,
getting some welcome cool relief. But shortly thereafter I was awakened
by a
rustling coming from inside the bag on top of the chair at the head
of the
bed. This time it was rats – three of
them gnawing on a bar of
soap Ziya had put in the bag for me. I shook the bag and they fled to a
hole they
had made in the wall near the foot of the bed.
I tried to go
back to sleep but the fleas’ agitated jumping led to their
renewed attack
on me, making sleep impossible.
I had learned the name of the guard earlier
so I called to Mehmed Çavuş.
I told him
that I knew it was forbidden to douse the lamp but since I was
used to sleeping
in the dark and the light was attracting the fleas, I wanted
to put the lamp
outside my room. He wasn’t all that
interested, but blew
out the lamp’s candle and left. I resumed my effort to sleep but the rats
took advantage of the darkness to return and surrounded my bag. I kept
on hitting it to scare them away but
two minutes later they were back and
more determined than before. Meahwhile,
the airborne fleas resumed their
scalding bites on my skin. Shaking the blanket to rid it of them, I
tried
to sleep.
As if this wasn’t enough torment, the
crazed cries of someone nearby,
seemingly having been slapped onto red-hot
iron, prompted me to
summon Mehmed Çavuş again.
He told me the screamer was an insane
person sent from some rural area
who was awaiting transfer to an asylum.
This situation led me to do some thinking about today’s prisons and
asylums, which distracted my mind enough to let me sleep. The next
thing I knew there was a knock on
the door and I saw that it was daytime
and, in fact, close to noon.
//END of PART TWO, section five//
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